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Does anyone have any inclination this year of what percentage of individuals with callbacks will be getting offers? Are most firms giving less callbacks this year or are they keeping the numbers the same and just giving offers to less? Anyone have any idea or is it just too early to tell?

There is nothing more to this thread than me just being really nervous. I got the feeling from a general consensus that in the past about 60% or so of individuals got offers. Will there be a substantial decrease in that this year or will it generally be around that number?

This is in regards to the Portland market, but one of the major firms in town told me that they cut their callback interviews from 60 last year to 12 this year. They hired/will hire ~8 and ~4 respectively.

2) why is harvard harvard? reputation. You think Latham is picking up people from the top of the T14 this year like they have in years past? Image is everything.

Firms don't want to appear like they are falling apart so they do a similar number of callbacks as in years past, they will make offers to the top students and claim that it's a buyer's market. When the top students get into better firms and burn them, the firms will blame the school, "we never get any students from UVA" or "we had unexpectedly low yield rates this year but our small summer class will allow us to give everyone quality work" etc etc. Doesn't matter to them, they made the offers and students didn't take them up on it, the firm's bluff will win. Firm's don't sweat blowing a couple hundred bucks on a fake callback, they do sweat 'above the law' running articles about how their firm doesn't have enough money to do a summer program or about revoking offers, laying off first years, or what have you.

I'm surprised how much worse it seems. I'm also concerned because a number of the firms I talked to didn't have many people from my school (like, 1 every 5 years or so in offices of 200+ attys). What's another year without a UVA student? However, it costs a lot to fly me across the country and then put me up. I've heard of UVA students getting DC and Richmond callbacks and hearing that the firm is calling back 5-10x the # of people they want to offer. I'm wondering whether those same firms are calling back the same proportions of callback/intended offer for West Coast students.

shadowfish wrote:I'm surprised how much worse it seems. I'm also concerned because a number of the firms I talked to didn't have many people from my school (like, 1 every 5 years or so in offices of 200+ attys). What's another year without a UVA student? However, it costs a lot to fly me across the country and then put me up. I've heard of UVA students getting DC and Richmond callbacks and hearing that the firm is calling back 5-10x the # of people they want to offer. I'm wondering whether those same firms are calling back the same proportions of callback/intended offer for West Coast students.

I would guess not, for the reasons you mention. CLS and NYU students for instance will sometimes have a lower offer/callback ratio at a given firm in NYC than, say, Chicago students who need to be flown in and put in a hotel at $500/night.

On the other hand, i'm looking at both NYC and Northern CA (from Duke), and most of the firms i'm looking at in NYC are looking for like 60 summer associates (down from their typical 100+ but still huge) as opposed to the NorCal offices, many of which only need 5 to 10 summer associates. This probably allows them to be a bit more selective. Plus, when the classes are that small, you wonder if slots need to be "reserved" to keep their relationship with Stanford and Berkeley. So a Stanford student will probably have a higher callback hit ratio in NYC than a CLS student in Palo Alto. Lots of competing and complicating factors at work there...who knows how it will all play out.

I was 8 for 10 last fall, but that was after turning down 16 other callbacks. The two callbacks that did not result in offers were both after Lehman Bros. and both at firms that were en route to huge layoffs just a few months later (Latham, White & Case).

I think last fall was probably worse in terms of percentage. Nobody knew how bad the collapse was going to be, and the firms likely wanted to wait as long as possible in the process to determine how many SA to hire. Once they realized the gravity of the situation, they ended up with a ton of callbacks and a lack of slots.

Fried Frank made 49 callbacks and 35 offers to yield only 2 acceptances from Columbia in 2006. Obviously yield will be higher from worse schools (although they shouldn't need as many of those ITE), and higher in general this year, but the anecdote you gave still doesn't prove too much.

Anonymous User wrote:As an example. Fried Frank is taking between 20-30 SA. They are doing 4 evening interview sessions of about 20 students each and then doing additional callbacks during the week.

That sounds like about 50/50 to me, given that those interviewing at a firm of that caliber have a good shot of getting at least one other offer.

Yeah, I think the offer rate in general is going to be low, but from what I've seen among my classmates, those who manage to get more than 1 offer are cleaning up across the board and picking from 5+ offers by the end of their callbacks. So the people with awesome grades + incredible interviewing skills will have good returns, while the rest of us will be lucky to have that 1 offer.

Anonymous User wrote:Yeah, I think the offer rate in general is going to be low, but from what I've seen among my classmates, those who manage to get more than 1 offer are cleaning up across the board and picking from 5+ offers by the end of their callbacks. So the people with awesome grades + incredible interviewing skills will have good returns, while the rest of us will be lucky to have that 1 offer.

I still know people who have no callbacks, too.

This.

Hopefully this will result in very low yields for firms in the next couple of weeks and firms will start to contact people who have been put on ice.

Unfortunately, since none of us seem to be on the recruitment committees of firms, all our propositions are total speculation. I had my own ideas, but before I posted, I realized it was simply an idea with no real facts to back it up.

Instead, I think, to the OP, we just need to let time run its course. Speculation won't make any difference. Within the next month we will all know our status. In the meantime, plot out plan B and C.

A bunch of firms have told me that they're making fewer offers this year, because they don't want to become oversubscribed. That means that they'll make a few offers, then wait to see how many acceptances come in... then they'll make more offers as necessary to get to their desired class size. And that means that firms will have waiting lists for weeks, if not months, to come.

A bunch of firms have told me that they're making fewer offers this year, because they don't want to become oversubscribed.

To play devil's advocate, if a firm becomes somewhat under-subscribed, don't count on them scrambling to hire a couple extra SA--even that is pure speculation. The less SA a firm has, the less likely they will have to defer the whole class like this year...

A bunch of firms have told me that they're making fewer offers this year, because they don't want to become oversubscribed.

To play devil's advocate, if a firm becomes somewhat under-subscribed, don't count on them scrambling to hire a couple extra SA--even that is pure speculation. The less SA a firm has, the less likely they will have to defer the whole class like this year...

Doesn't make much sense to me. They will have factored that in when making their original desired number.

I've heard from a couple people at firms around me that the callback to SA spots has been around 10:1. This does not necessarily mean that only 10% of callbacks will receive offers, as it's possible some will turn down the offer. Individual firm practices will obviously vary though. It is a very difficult year.

Anonymous User wrote:I've heard from a couple people at firms around me that the callback to SA spots has been around 10:1. This does not necessarily mean that only 10% of callbacks will receive offers, as it's possible some will turn down the offer. Individual firm practices will obviously vary though. It is a very difficult year.

I find this very hard to believe. A firm that is going to get 10 SA is going to bring back 100 to interview? That seems like a huge waste of resources to me.

I just spoke with a firm that is only taking 3-4 this year. They granted 29 initial screening interviews and called back 10 or 11. My guess would be that it's somewhere in between that and the 10:1 number. Maybe 4:1 with 35% or so getting offers, if I had to guess.